Comments

Guess since l2iou in its current form lacks several features i'd like to build the iou/iol lab out with l3iou and use physical switches, that way ican do the v4 stuff (l2iou has etherchannel issues) also. If this the correct breakout forum does anyone have any clear instructions? I have a dual nic mac pro, one is used for home network, and i can get 3560 switches. Cheers.

Just purchased a few 3560-24TS-S's with 32MB Flash online with the 15.0SE image already loaded on the devices. I would like to know if this image should work alright even though according to Cisco Docs it is only supported on the 3560v2's.

Additionally I am interested in how I will go about configuring the CSR1000V Routers on my ESXi server to communicate with the real switches. Is there a need for a 3750 breakout switch between the Hypervisor and SW1? Or is there something that can be done within VWware to perform this task for us.

I am thinking about putting a GNS3 build together with 4 physical switches. I will probably see if I can get an decom'd server from work to run GNS3 on, but the switches I have in my lab are only 3550s. I really can't afford new switches, nor do I have access to any CSR1000 licenses (nor IOU). WIth v5 coming up I really want to start working with the new workbooks and larger topologies. How much would I miss out on by using the 3550s? I understand that I might miss some of the newer L2 topics but I can always fall back to my rack tokens for that work. I have a lot of practice to do and I don't want to suck up my tokens on WB1 stuff.

I am thinking about putting a GNS3 build together with 4 physical switches. I will probably see if I can get an decom'd server from work to run GNS3 on, but the switches I have in my lab are only 3550s. I really can't afford new switches, nor do I have access to any CSR1000 licenses (nor IOU). WIth v5 coming up I really want to start working with the new workbooks and larger topologies. How much would I miss out on by using the 3550s? I understand that I might miss some of the newer L2 topics but I can always fall back to my rack tokens for that work. I have a lot of practice to do and I don't want to suck up my tokens on WB1 stuff.

I was checking the documentation for IOS 15.0 and 3560-24TS-S wasn't on the list of required hardware. At the same time, I have come across people who are running IOS 15 successfully on 3560-24TS-S. My question is, do you foresee any issues if we run IOS 15.0 on 3560-24TS-S with 32mb memory? E and X series swithces are really expensive so it would be awesome if we can use 3560-24TS-S with IOS15.

I think INE could help in that department buy designing the Foundation/Full scale labs with some thought:

Specifically, if a feature can be done on a router in the lab, put it on a router and not a switch. If it is a feature unique to switches, then have it on the switches. This could decrease the chances that a person running older switches would not be able to complete a task in the lab. There will still be some things that can not be done without the required hardware, but could be reduced with some thought.

How do you setup to telnet to the physical switches if you connect 1 trunk link from the physical sw1 to the hypervisor? I have setup to serial console to my 10 CSR routers but not sure how to do it for physical switches.

I am using a Terminal Server, Digi CM 32. It uses a straight through cable connected to the console port of the physical switches. You then manage the telnet sessions on the Digi's web based GUI, then setup your Terminal Access to telnet to the right port on the Terminal Server that leads the correct switch.

How do you setup to telnet to the physical switches if you connect 1 trunk link from the physical sw1 to the hypervisor? I have setup to serial console to my 10 CSR routers but not sure how to do it for physical switches.

I understand that you can put IOS 15.X on a 3560-24TS-S because it has 32mb on flash, but what I don't understand is how/where you get this. I'm not requesting IOS images (I'm employed at a Cisco VAR) so I can download these at my leisure, but when I go to the Cisco support pages for that particular model of switch...I don't see IOS 15.X available for download. Am I supposed to download the IOS 15.X for the 3560V2-24TS-S, and that will work for the V1? Any insight you guys can provide will be much appreciated.

What is meant by BreakoutSwitch, Is it normal switch that can be a bridge between Virtual Routers and physical switches (I am talking about building GNS-VitualRouters With physical Switches).

Yes, it is L3 switch who can do L2 tunneling like 3550, 3560, 3750. This would mean you need extra switch, so 5 switches. Tested it in Ubuntu because of my lack of Windows drivers for my PC NIC. (NIC must support vlan tagging).

However, with new topology, the word is that You do not need Breakout switch. you can connect all routers to sw1 out of 4 switches. not sure if that would work.

A couple of quick questions about these switches and about the strategy that you would recommend for building the lab:

-what is the highest IOS version that I can run on these? I think that the 3650 will take c3560-ipbasek9-mz.150-2.SE6.bin but I am not sure about the 3550s

-would it be possible to boot a higher IOS version (larger IOS file) via TFTP? If yes, do I need to do it via rommon ? I have tried with "boot system tftp://... " but no luck. I am still trying to solve the problem -using TFTP on Ubuntu can be a challenge sometimes. Not very descriptieve error messages

-why is the new physical topology different from the old one? The old topology that I have has 3x1FE channels between each possible pair of switches. I have not had the chance to go over the new workbook to see what is changed there but at a first look I can see at least this major difference.

-I have had a quick look at the files required for each technology lab and I noticed that unlike before most of the times you have just router files that have to be loaded for the new technology lab. What happens with the switch configurations? Is there a set of files that has to be loaded and that rarely changes from a technology lab to the next ?

-this is a side question: what happened with the backbone routers, I don't see them in the physical diagram anymore. This is realated to my strategy to connect the server that emulates the routers to the physical switches (see the next question)

-due to a preexisting V4 lab one of my servers has 3 quad FastEthernet NICs and 2x1GB ethernet cards so that is a total of 14 cards.

Considering that I have so many cards available I would like to use these cards to connect my routers to the switches where this is needed. The only problem that I have is that looking at the new workbook and trying to compare this with the old one I see that quite a lot changed in the number of labs and the topologies used for these. I will post another set of questions in the section dedicated to workbooks. For now all I want to ask you guys is if this (using separate interfaces to connect the routers to switches) is doable considering the topologies in this new workbook.

The 3560s which have 32MB of RAM are the only ones that can accept that 15.0 image. Without that RAM, you'll probably only be able to get up to IOS version 12.4 on the 3560s you have. I can't speak on the 3550s.

Do what Brian McGahan suggests. Do as many labs with the equipment you do have. Whenever you get to a function that isn't available in your IOS, make a note of it. Upgrade your equipment, practice with a friend's newer equipment, if you have a lab at work with newer equipment, practice with that, or just use rack rentals for those things you can't do with your own equipment.

I haven't been through many labs yet myself, but looking at the configuration files for the different labs, it seems many of them don't even require the switches. Most of the labs are about routing.

The used online inventory of 3560s with the 32MB memory is good. You should be able to find 24 or 48 port 3560s with 32MB of RAM for around $125 each, including shipping, on ebay. I did, and that was several months ago.

On your last question, you only really need two NICs. One server NIC for management. Connect that NIC to the rest of the network at your home. This way you can manage the bare metal hypervisor server. And the other server NIC can connect to your switches (actually just Switch 1 as seen here: http://labs.ine.com/workbook/view/rs-v5-workbook/task/ines-ccie-r-s-v5-hardware-topology-MjU1NA%3D%3D). Put that server NIC and the interfaces of your routers on a separate virtual switch within your hypervisor environment. This way the lab with be in its own cocoon and it won't affect your home network.

If you have a VM with tftp and Wireshark, place the interface of that VM on the same virtual switch as the rest of your lab. That way you can tftp copy configs to the routers and the switches. I recommend copying all of the configs to the devices and using the "config replace" command that Brian mentions here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E0ez5lsqi8.

Sorry that I missed that. I assumed that it is somehow understood that this is Linux (hint: tap0) and that br0 is traditionally used for a linux bridge as opposite to ovsbr0 which is used for openvsiwtch bridge

I am not interested in running GNS3. This is IOU running natively on Linux no virtual machine used

Are you sure that there are no limitations with this config? Don't you need Q in Q configured here? AFAIK L2IOU does not support that and there are serious limitations with L2 IOU in between the routers and real switches